A blog for the Alexandria, Virginia, Chapter of the Barbershop Harmony Society.

Saturday, January 4, 2014

Looking
Back on the 2013 Holiday Dinner Shows, Dec. 6 -7

This year’s Harmonizer holiday
dinner shows Friday nite, Saturday afternoon and Saturday nite, were sold out
weeks in advance.The music was better
than any holiday show in years, maybe ever.We had some new songs the guys liked singing like “Little Saint Nick,”
“Fa La La La La,” and “Feliz Navidad” with its own calypso band.There were so many guys singing in the show,
the stage was packed!The audiences
laughed and awarded us standing ovations over and over. So many new guys raised
their hands when director Joe Cerutti
asked, “Who is singing in their first show with the Harmonizers?” that YeEd couldn’t write all the names fast
enough.

The new auction launched this year by
Brad Jones and Randall Eliason was fun for the audiences and brought in significant
extra income for the chapter.And those
sales set the mood for guests to buy ahead for next year’s show.

We were honored to have as guests on
Friday nite’s show, The American Boychoir, from Princeton, NJ.Former member Myles Glancey contacted us when their concert in the DC area was
canceled, to see if the Boychoir might sing on our show.What fun.

Costumes were great and reflected
some effort by producers to get good toy examples or elves.The new members caught the spirit just fine.

Jack-in-the-Box Terry Reynolds made the show flow along with several other members
doing character parts in the first two acts that were scripted – a theme that
was based around word that Santa gave his elves a cruise, the cruise ship was
captured by pirates, but Jack got them to quit their life of crime to be Monks,
and all the while the singers shoe-horned in all kinds of songs we knew.The third act was a more formal holiday
concert with a mix of barbershop and choral music and sacred music such as the
famous Chanticleer arrangement of “Ava Maria.” Our chapter a cappella group,
TBD, and quartet ACME CHORD COMPANY (Dan
O’Brien, Chris Susalka, Paul Grimes, Eric Wallen) sang on the show
too.Both groups played parts in the
scripted portion – with TBD being the pirates. Will Cox was pirate king and also entertained the crowds with his
very funny recitation of“Twas the Night
Before Christmas.”

Many Friends in Harmony and family
members helped us staff the show such as stage management, do the “monks” cue
cards, decorate the hall to make it into Santa’s workshop, and to operate the
house and sales efforts. Assistant
director Terry Reynolds was coach
coordinator for the “monks” group.

The tech crew with Mike Kelly at the helm worked hard to
make things go smoothly for lights and sound, prerecorded messages including
messages from the “parrot” played by Ken
Fess, who followed the pirate king all over the stage! Dixie
Kennett did her usual fine job with lights, making everyone look as good
as possible.

It takes a lot of little details to
make it all work: Archie the staffer
at First Baptist was a gem to help us get tables or plugs or wires or such; the
kitchen staff worked hard to prepare the foods we purchased and hauled in (we
served about 400 people at each of the three shows the lasagna, salad, bread,
green beans); everyone brought great holiday cookies to add to the brownies the
cooks made; Roger Day and his crew
made the hall sparkle especially with all the wrapped boxes from the chorus
members; Bruce Minnick made kids
happy who wanted to talk to Santa Claus; Steve
White brought his handmade sleigh bells for some of our songs; Nellie Crusenberry spent Friday
rebuilding uniforms for TBD; Ike Evans
tuned the piano in the hall so the Boychoir could have a well-tuned instrument
for Friday nite; Nick Leiserson made
it possible for the youth choir to have a tour of the Nation’s Capital; many
members who don’t sing currently helped with major jobs too like Joe (and Janet) Cerutti Sr. in
the sound booth, and Gary Plaag, Dennis
Ritchey and Bob Eckman in the
kitchen; several father/son combinations were on the stage – Todd and Luke Ryktarsyk, Tommy andGarrett Garner, and Joshua and David DesPortes, plus Joe and Joe Sr.; guys out did themselves in getting the audiences to sing
crazy responses for the “Twelve Days of Christmas,” several guys formed
quartets to do the first and fifth day responses, a crew of guys worked Friday morning to haul
in all the decorations and all the boxes of food for the kitchen crew into the
hall – sure seems like Bob Blair and Bob Rhome were on hand at every call
for those tasks, and it all got put away Saturday nite in our storage units
thanks to all the men who helped load the Harmo truck after the show.

Before each show, the music team did
warm ups and some run-throughs of the songs.Show management seemed to have it all together with chorus manager Mark Klostermeyer on duty, dining room
or house manager Jeremy Knobel,
overall show manager Nick Leiserson,
and script writers Josh Roots and Scipio Garling.

Hopefully YeEd has gotten all the credits of members who had significant
tasks, since there was no reference or printed program for the event. If you
were missed, sorry.Let YeEd know for the record.Thanks.

Until next time –
editorjack!

(This message is
prepared for your review if you were there, for your information if you had to
miss, and as a historical record of the great things going on each week during
the 65th year of the Alexandria Harmonizer Chapter. —YeEd.)